I blog about cybersecurity stuff here. I try to take a generally pragmatic view, not get overly technical and not preach too heavily about spending all your money and time securing yourself.

Securing yourself online

My blog has been slightly inactive on account of my travels. Here is a little Christmas gift. This article contains points that I have distilled from a presentation that I have made for the same purpose, i.e. educating people about what they can do to make their online lives more secure.

There are a number of things that we can do to keep our valuable data private and available to us when we need it. Here are a bunch of them that I apply in my personal life. They start from the simple and free and go towards the technically complex and paid. Note that I have avoided putting in details on how to do each item as the article is already long. Doing a search on Google (or DuckDuckGo) with the heading should provide you with more details on each item.

Caveat: none of the advice below guarantees your security. If the NSA wants to see what you’re doing, they probably will. Security requires ‘defence in depth’. If one measure is surmountable, it helps to have another measure to back you up. If a malicious entity somehow breaks the security of your VPN, they may be set back by your HTTPS connections; if they sniff/steal your password, they may be set back by your 2FA token. Those of us in the information security industry hope for (and work toward) a future where the layman does not need to have sophisticated IT knowledge in order to secure their lives. Read on!

Backups
Some stuff is too valuable to have only one copy of. In the event that a hard disk fails, you will want to have a backup in another hard disk or on the cloud. Every article that I write is initially typed up on my computer / online storage before it is copied into my website. Additional hard disks for storing large volumes of photos and videos is now cheap.

Password locking & password managers
If your computer connects to the internet, it can be easily accessed remotely and it needs a password. Make it at least 15 characters and do not reuse the same password anywhere else. Read this series of posts aboutpassword management and stop trying to memorise all your passwords. Get a password manager to remember passwords for you. Make your passwords totally random, long, distinct (do not use the same one in two places) and unmemorable. One password for your computer, one for your phone and one for the password manager should be all you need to remember. I have also come across recommendations (there is no consensus) to not use security questions that allow you to recover your account if you should forget your password. They fill the security question field with gibberish. Security questions to help reset passwords are a weakness that allows people to access accounts without cracking their passwords.

Windows update (and other autoupdates)
This is a critical and fundamental security measure. Ensure that automatic updates are turned on by default for your Windows and other software on your computer. The browsers that you use and MS Office are critical. Java and Flash are notorious for their vulnerabilities and need frequent updates. Any time a vulnerability is found, there is a race between manufacturers trying to push updates to users and malicious actors attempting to exploit the vulnerability. Enabling auto updates keeps you on the safer side of the curve.

Windows firewall
The default firewall on your computer should be enabled. More precisely, do not disable it.

Antivirus
This is something fundamental. It should not give you a sense of security, but having antivirus or antimalware software is a minimum security requirement. Plenty of free and paid antivirus software are available. The fact that you pay for it does not necessarily make it better.

Pirated software and jailbroken devices
Using pirated software is a good way to introduce malware into your computer yourself. The act of jailbreaking a device to give it features that the manufacturers did not intend it to have necessarily requires breaking the security of the device. Avoid doing these things. Get software that is free to use or buy commercial software.

Mobile phones
If your phone allows biometric authentication, enable it and use it. Your secondary authentication mechanism must be a long PIN / password (10+ characters minimum, 14+ optimal). The PIN might be slightly easier to use on account of the bigger size of the buttons. Drawing patterns and 6-digit PINs are easily observed by shoulder surfing and easily broken by technical means. Do not leave the phone where others can physically access it.

Laptops and other portables
These devices should not be left in places where other people can access them. It is possible for someone malicious to fry your computer by plugging something nasty into its USB drive in seconds (see USBKILL) and walk away. It is also possible for someone to gain control of a locked computer, again by sticking something into the USB port, in seconds. The cost of gaining access? A $5 device (see PoisonTap). The previously mentioned advice about HTTPS also helps with the last item.

Encrypt the hard disks of devices (including phones) to protect data from theft in the event that the device is physically taken. Encryption is not a panacea. It is effective if the device is switched off, but it might be possible for a skilled attacker to extract data from a powered – on device.

Connecting to WIFI
Never connect to free insecure WIFI is the general security advice. Some people go further, choosing to always carry their personal WIFI router with them when they travel. Having a VPN connection enabled by defaultmay be a mitigating measure to connect to insecure WIFI (see below).

Email
Avoid clicking on links on opening attachments sent to you by email. This is the easiest way people get hacked – not through fancy technical mumbo-jumbo, but though stuff sent to you by email. Avoid forwarding any email that asks you to forward it.

USB drives
USB is infamous for being fundamentally insecure. At a basic level, never plug in an unknown USB stick into your computer, especially if you find it in the car park or on your desk. This includes iPads and phones that need to be charged – i.e. anything that has a hard disk. Don’t do it as a favour to someone that you do not know (some of us would not do it as a favour to people whom we do know). Disable autorunning of USB devices. You can find a number of articles explaining how to do this for your operating system. Also recollect the two items (USBKill and PoisonTap) mentioned in the section about keeping portable devices physically secure.

Software and apps
In general, install software and apps only from trusted parties. Do not install mobile apps from outside the standard app stores. For mobile phones, be wary of apps that ask for many permissions to function. The newest versions of IOS and Android allow users to give the app permissions only when it actually needs them.

Browser & websites

Any site that you login to must use HTTPS. Do not enter credentials or personal information such as date of birth, credit card information or ID information into a site that has no HTTPS. Add on the HTTPS Everywhere free plugin to your browser to force all sites that have more secure encrypted versions to provide you with the encrypted version of the site. Using HTTPS does not ensure security (it requires a slightly technical and much longer article), but without it one can not expect web browsing security.

Automatically clear your cache when you close the browser. This may be hard to get used to, but it makes it significantly harder for third parties (and first party sites) to track you. This can prevent websites from showing you the inflated prices that they showed you the first time you visited – since they no longer know that you had already visited. Enable the do not track feature. Use an ad blocker to block advertisements. Advertisements are a way for malware to spread through web browsers and to slow down your browsing. The site owner usually has no control over what content is provided to you in advertisements. A year ago, Forbes spread malware to its readers through advertisements.

Use a different browser for stuff like your email and social media that require you to log in and another browser for all other browsing. This can prevent Facebook from knowing that you’re planning a vacation to Iceland and providing you with ads. It can also prevent a malicious site that you happen to be on from reading information that you provide another site.

Control what is on your social media
Periodically check privacy settings on social media to understand how the content that belongs to you is used by companies such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Tagging your face on pictures makes it easy for software to identify your face resulting in consequences that may be positive or negative. In general, do not post things on social media that you may regret if someone reads it out of context. It is easy for someone to screenshot your post and paste it elsewhere, minus the context. Avoid giving out information such as your date of birth and family members as this information may be used by your bank or a government to authenticate you. (When was the last time you had to tell someone on the phone your birth date or your mother’s maiden name to convince them that you were you? It can’t have been very long ago.)

Home router
Critical: change the default username and password for the WIFI router. This is typically something like ‘admin’ for username and password. In many cases you can reach the settings page by typing in “192.168.0.1” or “192.168.1.1” into your browser. Change the SSID (i.e. the WIFI name) and if possible disable access point broadcasting. Default SSIDs make it trivial to find the kind of WIFI router and makes it that much easier to attack. I have known wireless printers to be unable to connect if you disable AP broadcasting, so it might not always be possible. Use WPA2-PSK security with a long password for connecting to the WIFI (note that this is different from the router admin password). Periodically update the router software (every half year is a good bet for the layman).

SMS and phone calls
Understand that the providers of your mobile connection have all information about the numbers that you dial and the contents of the SMSs that you send. They can also listen to your calls. If this concerns you, you might want to use encrypted messaging (see ‘different providers’ section) and encrypted calling services. They function in a foolproof manner only when both people use the service and the encryption is end to end, but encrypting content to the service provider gives some amount of privacy as well.

Use a VPN
Virtual private networks (VPNs) are commonly used to create an encrypted remote connection between a person and his office environment when he is not on site. This technology can be used to protect your internet browsing data as well. VPNs can be used to protect your browsing if you need to connect to weakly protected WIFI networks and to mask your location from thisa parties. VPN software typically require payment, but can be cheap.Edit 2 (31 Jan 2017): I have removed this recommendation altogether because using the wrong VPN provider can cause greater risk to the user than not using a VPN at all. Too high a proportion of VPNs are implemented insecurely / have a shady business model for this recommendation to stand [research paper].Edit: VPN caveats: Not all VPNs are created equal. Understand their business model and whether they do actually value your privacy. Obviously, the VPN provider has the ability to read data when it enters and leaves the tunnel (prior to any VPN encryption) unless the traffic is encrypted even before it goes into the VPN (e.g. all your Facebook and Gmail traffic). If the VPN is available for free, ask why. Does their business model depend upon selling user information?

Use different providers altogether
Use providers of services who respect your privacy and do not use your information for their own benefit. Try DuckDuckGo for search instead of Google; secure email services instead of Gmail (which reads your mail) or Live mail / Outlook (which can read your mail). If you are still using Yahoo!, please stop now! (right now!) The same goes for messaging tools and VOIP. See the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) secure messaging scorecard regarding security and privacy. You may be pleased to know that the most common messaging application, Whatsapp, is quite good at the moment.